Because even if they actually had an income of zero, they had saved up enough money over the years to be able to survive off it for some time. Commonly referred to as a "war chest". They don't actually have an income of zero though, their income is actually quite significant since they still have major trading partners like Iran, India and China to sell their fossil fuels and other resources to. They don't buy fossil fuels, incidentally, they sell them. Like Saudi Arabia.
Also, you can buy things with more than just money. People figure that Kim Jong Un probably isn't trading his stuff to them for money, but instead is getting technological assistance from them. Just one of their modern fighter-bomber tech, for instance, would be immeasurably valuable to N Korea, where their own tech has lagged behind a good bit over the years.
Lastly, people in the west have been doing sanctions evasion. I recall some German financial/tech company has its CEO now wanted by Interpol for being a Russian agent. So, when your own people are playing fast and loose with the law, that's going to make things like sanctions more difficult.
We're never actually going to win this arms race. We need a structural solution. Perhaps we could look into, maybe, decentralizing social media so no single algorithm ends up controlling huge chunks of it?
You speak fluent English, any markets for that kind of skill in that area? Could teach maybe?
Unfortunately, the time-honored tradition for people in your situation is to keep your head down, keep quiet and be careful. I imagine you probably already knew that though.
No complacency on our side. When fascism is marching, it needs to be drowned in a tidal wave of mythical proportions, so they see just how outnumbered they are, how violence won't work for them. Fear is their tool, it's what they understand. So, no mercy.
It's not a question of if he is. It's a question of how to get from where we are, to a place where we are rehabilitating instead of threatening and punishing.
No system is perfect, but we can't over-marginalize criminals just to keep ourselves safe from them, or we risk just entrenching their beliefs.
A focus on rehabilitation by undoing the brainwashing of a criminal mindset? You essentially have to re-parent them, since somebody screwed it up initially. A heavy focus on reducing recidivism wouldn't completely prevent problems or anything, but you can teach people the benefits of cooperative behavior and actually just ... being cool.
China keeps threatening their actual most well-positioned rival, they shouldn't be surprised if India starts reacting poorly. Especially given Modi's nationalist leanings.
The recent Maldives thing really drives it home that China isn't looking for friends, they're looking for tools for naval basing and power projection.
I don't understand how this disagrees with me from a messaging standpoint. Certainly numbers can be fabricated, it's simply more troublesome, because they're easier to check. When you show why the stock market is booming, and how companies are making record profit, then I think it shows in another way how Biden can demonstrate what the real culprits behind American QoL decay are.
This makes sense as a message, regardless of whether it is perfect or not, which no message is.
I don't think anything can crack a die hard MAGA repub. But different strategies can work on different subsets of on-the-fence repubs who might just be semi-bubbled, but not totally insulated.
Frankly, not everyone has a problem with fascism, and you can't necessarily make them, either. Let's not kid ourselves. An economic argument provided with evidence of corrupt behavior might convince some, and would be well worth trying in certain situations.
It's evolved. His understanding of anti-science attacks seems to be of those leveled by the older GOP, the ones that only wanted their businesses to be free to make the max amount of money.
However, that same tool of generalized chaos, confusion and eventually, disgust and hatred from that sustained confusion, are exactly how you increase the chances of a fascist strongman rising to power in a place that otherwise wouldn't have happened. Because it helps make people afraid.
This is a case where the genie has been let out of the bottle by a bunch of fools, and now its out, and we all might pay dearly. With a lot more than cutting of funding and support, we're sliding towards mass violence, as seen in previous centuries.
I think, when possible, we need to present our evidence for our positions to the public in ways that are as hard to refute as possible. One way is numerically, particularly with nice visualizations included.
Because honestly, they just don't believe us. The problem has continued to worsen, and now people have not just opponents, but enemies. The preferred approach for actual, honest-to-god enemies is usually destruction, because emotions start running things. We can still appeal to rationality, but we need things that are as hard to distrust as possible. Using narrative was a great idea 10 years ago, but has been losing effectiveness.
Can we quantify potential benefits for the things we do, in ways someone with only a HS level of education can understand?
I was thinking about this in terms of messaging, and one idea we can try is to take a page from the Ross Perot playbook. One weakness we tend to have as more humanities-trained thinkers is we don't really try to communicate numerically.
Numbers and mathematics are harder to fudge than words, and that can work in our favor, for anyone involved with communicating to an actual audience. Particularly with regards to economic messaging though. It's one thing to say companies are profiteering, it's another to take the time to provide graphs, figures and historical data as evidence of your claims.
A core aspect of the fascist playbook is to undermine everyone's trust in everything. By sowing chaos and distrust, you can create an environment sufficiently uncomfortable that people clamor for someone to come in and simplify things, at any cost.
It's worked before, and it can again. Nothing stands in its way except us, and our ability to explain to people that might, possibly trust us and be reachable.
It's funny how few people understand how fragile democracy really is, just because our American version has proven fairly robust. Education is a tool for preventing its decline, but treatment options once decline is established are far more limited, and rely on grassroots civic engagement.
They're trying to pander to the conspiracy theorists for a quick buck. This story probably took less than an hour to research and write, and probably brought in some decent ad revenue from the gays-taking-over-the-world crowd.
Do remember that's a tenet of Putin's justification for opposition to the west.
Because even if they actually had an income of zero, they had saved up enough money over the years to be able to survive off it for some time. Commonly referred to as a "war chest". They don't actually have an income of zero though, their income is actually quite significant since they still have major trading partners like Iran, India and China to sell their fossil fuels and other resources to. They don't buy fossil fuels, incidentally, they sell them. Like Saudi Arabia.
Also, you can buy things with more than just money. People figure that Kim Jong Un probably isn't trading his stuff to them for money, but instead is getting technological assistance from them. Just one of their modern fighter-bomber tech, for instance, would be immeasurably valuable to N Korea, where their own tech has lagged behind a good bit over the years.
Lastly, people in the west have been doing sanctions evasion. I recall some German financial/tech company has its CEO now wanted by Interpol for being a Russian agent. So, when your own people are playing fast and loose with the law, that's going to make things like sanctions more difficult.